I spent many years avoiding any association with the odd people who chase through swamps and forests after birds. Everything about birders made me laugh: the sensible shirts tucked into long pants, the sturdy shoes, safari hats, bug spray sticking out out of rucksacks and backpacks. They always seemed to travel with heavy binoculars, complicated cameras and a library of field guides. The total package reminded me of the many eccentrics I know and like, but I was damned sure I wasn't going to be one of them.
And then I picked up photography as a hobby, a few bird pictures found their way into my albums. The first subjects were shore birds in Florida, some of which were snowbirds from Minnesota. One thing led to another, and I signed up for a bird watching walking tour in Ixtapa, Mexico, where I had fallen in love with the sound of the chachalaca bird in the woods surrounding Las Brisas resort, a beautiful remote hotel on the Gulf of Mexico. Then my sister gave me an elaborate bird feeder and the rest is ... history.
The other day I went out after a snowstorm to haul bird food from the garage to the feeder. I was wearing a hat and scarf that concealed much of me, the part that didn't look crazy. I carried a white bucket full of seed and suet in one hand, and a long gardening trowel-like implement in the other. I used the trowels to ease one of the feeders off its hook for refilling.
A fashionably dressed dog walker with a handsome black lab passed by on the far side of the street. As the dog stopped for the usual reason, his companion watched me work at the feeder. I could picture myself, standing in my old jeans and work boots, hair an uncombed mess full of snow. working out of a bucket like a fishwife doing hard time. The pair moved on. I hoped -- vaguely -- that the man didn't know me.
Yesterday I headed out on a walk with my camera, hoping to take a few shots of holiday decorations in our Saint Paul neighborhood. I strayed off the sidewalk spotted a handsome red tailed hawk in a tall tree in the grounds of the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity. I moved closer through the deep snow to see if I could get a better shot, and was soon the only figure in the middle of the woodsy property, watching the hawk fly off.
I traipsed through the snowy woods to Mississippi River Boulevard, but had to walk on the side of the road because I was afraid of falling head first in the snow if I attempted to climb the snowbank over to the path. I moved along as energetically as I could, well aware that I very much fit the birder profile: practical clothes, darkened transition lenses, camera case around my neck, camera in one hand.
I got to the path through the parking lot off Summit, and was soon gazing upward at what seemed to be a winter robin in a nearby tree. A young woman in a short red skirt and black jacket went by and looked quickly at me before she sped off on her walk. I felt just a little embarrassed.
